you find me a geranium balloon?... No, they’re all off-colour. I’ll
take a blue one. Harold, come here! Stay with me and you’ll enjoy
yourself. John, the other side for you. I find you charming, John.
There’s something so fresh and wholesome about you Wall Street men
after a week-end in the country. The country is so perverse, nothing
normal about it at all. The boy who took care of the cows had jaundice.
You’re a duck, Cam--Mrs. Lorillard, John laughed. Let’s do a scenic
railway in the same seat.
Game! This long one. She pointed to a great structure, waving up
and down cross country on incredibly tall stilts. They entered the
gateway and booked places. As they swung and pitched down the headlong
descents, she grasped him first by the arms, then round the shoulders,
leaning against him, and, while he was only mildly thrilled by the
motion--he had been an ace in the army--, her magnetic propinquity
proved more unsettling. At the end of the ride, she removed the
withered geraniums from her belt and tossed them away.
I’ll get you some more: Harold was beside her again.
No more flowers today, she announced decisively, but thank you,
Harold.... She turned to John: With you next to me, I’d like to do that
over.
Game! he echoed her earlier refrain.
She laughed. We’ll try another sport.
They stood before a small, brightly decorated wooden structure, in
front of which, stretched on ropes, a dozen rudely painted banners
informed passers-by of the nature of the attractions to be viewed
within. It was a sideshow, a congress of freaks, an assemblage of
strange people. There were, the posters promised, a sword-swallower,
a tattooed lady, giants and pigmies, a three-legged man, a bearded
gentlewoman, a man with an iron tongue, a fellow with a revolving
head, a wild man of Borneo, an armless man; in short, an auspicious
miscellany. The barker, standing on a low platform, was functioning,
waving his hands and shouting to the curious crowd which had assembled.
Within, he declared, we have the greatest collection of abnormal human
beings ever exhibited together under one roof. Where else can you see
the little lady only two feet high, who is ninety years of age? Where
else can you gaze upon a death-defying demon who eats sharp knives and
thrives on fire? He swallows the burning flames as you and I swallow
our bread and meat. His throat is the wonder of science. See the
Rrrrrrrrussian cossack who carries thousands of pounds in weights on
a hook passed through his tongue! The man with the iron tongue! See
the little lady with her snakes. This little lady, a picture of female
beauty, is only sixteen years old, and yet she wraps a forty-pound boa
constrictor around her waist and defies him to crrrrrush her. The most
terrifying spectacle you can observe on the entire island.
That settles it, exclaimed Campaspe. I adore snakes, and so they passed
the entrance. A few others followed them in, but the greater part
of the crowd lingered outside to stare at the huge, crudely painted
banners, and to listen to the gifted barker.
Inside, a series of platforms circled the small room, and on these
platforms were ranged the strange people, the midgets, the tall men,
the sword-swallowers, and ladies bearded and tattooed. Some of them
looked merely bored, but most of them wore a superior expression
of conscious pride, considering themselves, indubitably, of some
importance in the world, contemptuous of that part of the public which
did not share their peculiar perfections. Their costumes ran to red and
blue and gold and pink, tricked out with tinsel and machine-made lace.
All were retailing photographs of their strange selves, and a few sold
booklets. Occasionally, these favoured folk conversed with one another,
spoke a few words, casual and solemn at best, for it could be seen that
they had nothing of importance to say to one another or to the world,
nothing, save: Here I am; look at me; I am a brilliant exception on
this sphere where you are conspicuously and defectively normal. You
have only two legs, the three-legged man seemed to assert sneeringly,
while the lady with The Last Supper tattooed on her back and Rock of
Ages on her belly was obviously a trifle impatient with such women as
were forced to wear mere clothes by way of decorating their bodies.
Campaspe noted these impressions, while the barker was introducing
the little ladies and the wild men. Now he stood before a platform
on which was seated a girl who immediately drew the attention of
Campaspe’s group. She was assuredly an exception, a special jewel.
She had the delicate features of a beauty from the Caucasus or an
aristocratic Levantine Jewess. Her fragile nose, her exquisitely formed
lips, her high cheek-bones had been modelled by an artist. She was a
girl, evidently, for whom God had determined to do his best. Short
and slender, her body was rhythmic and full of grace. Her head was
set above her shoulders in a piquant, bird-like way, while a mass of
fluffy brown hair surrounded her pale face and her great green eyes
with a delicious shadow. She wore a costume of spangled crimson, cut
off at the knees, with a low neck and no sleeves, and on her head a
skull-cap fashioned entirely of purple sequins, and surmounted by a
feather almost as tall as herself. Her stockings were the colour of the
blue-jay’s feathers.
What a lovely creature! cried Campaspe.
She’s beautiful, said Paul.
Even Harold regarded the girl with curiosity, as she stood up to
go through with her act without any of the abandon of the other
performers. Ill at ease in her costume and out of place in the show,
still it could be seen that she was lacking in self-consciousness.
There was no rouge on her face, no paint on her lips.
This little lady to the right, announced the barker, is the bravest
little lady in the show. Only sixteen years of age, she handles the
fiercest and most dangerous rrreptiles with the carelessness of a
farmhand petting a tame calf. She has visited the jungle and brought
back with her vipers with fangs so deadly that one dart would kill a
buffalo, boa constrictors who could fold a full-grown African lion
in their coils and crrrush him to death, the deadly poisonous Indian
cobra, more dreaded by the natives than the man-eating tiger! And to
make her act more dangerous, it is our custom to feed these venomous
reptiles only once a month. They are hungry now. They have not been fed
for three weeks. Show the ladies and gentlemen what you can do, Zimbule.
As a hurdy-gurdy groaned out a melancholy rendering of I hear you
calling me, the little lady stooped over a great chest, painted bright
pink and studded with brass-headed nails, and raised the cover.
From the gaping box one gathered a confused impression of a nest of
lethargic serpents. One, more active than the rest, elevated his great
jewelled head, with its staring, beaded eyes, and protruded his forked
tongue. With a lack of relish, an active distaste, indeed, which must
have been apparent even to the small boys present, the little lady
lifted the huge, scaly monster out of the chest and disposed his heavy
iridescent folds around her torso. Up to a certain point, the snake
submitted with an easy grace and a seeming lassitude. Quite suddenly,
however, with a quick brilliant movement, which in its intricacy
baffled the beholder, he coiled himself securely three or four times
about her waist in an embrace which constantly grew more perilous,
while, with his head pointing vertically straight upward from her
abdomen, he darted what might be called forked kisses at her chin. The
girl’s face assumed a pallor which gave to her beauty an even greater
delicacy. Her lips quivered; immediately, only the whites of her eyes
were visible; her body collapsed, and she fell heavily to the floor.
The serpent, alarmed, perhaps, by this new game, swiftly unrolled
himself and glided back into his box.
Quick! Campaspe whispered to John. Quick! Get the child!
Armstrong vaulted to the platform, caught Zimbule in his arms and,
descending, made his way through the group, too astonished to question
or oppose him, out to the open air. Thence Campaspe and the others
followed him.
That’s right! the barker approved. Take her out! Give her the air!
It’s criminal. She’s only a baby ... Campaspe exclaimed.
They all have to begin, said the barker. It’s her first show here, but
she swore she was on. These kids lie like hell.
To a little plot of grass behind the show-building John had borne her,
laying her gently on the sward, while Campaspe and the others swiftly
surrounded her and kept the crowd from surging too close. Paul had
found some water which he dashed in her face. Presently, she opened her
great green eyes.
Who are you? she asked, and Campaspe was relieved to discover that
a rather common voice and accent offered the proper contrast to the
refined beauty of her features.
Don’t talk, suggested Campaspe. Wait till you feel better.
The amateur snake-charmer glanced searchingly into the faces of her new
friends; presently, she smiled.
Well, I was game.
What did you do it for? demanded Campaspe.
Coin. You gotta eat.
Hungry?
Ain’t had a good feed for a week.
Where do you live?
No place.
Where’s your family?
In hell, I guess.
Any friends?
Don’t kid me.
Campaspe turned to John again. Carry her to the car, she directed.
He bent over to lift her once more, but the child, now resting her chin
on the palm of her left hand, and half sitting up, rejected his offer
of assistance.
Say, I can walk.
Come with us. We’ll get you something to eat, Campaspe explained. She
slipped a five dollar bill into the palm of the barker, with the words,
She doesn’t belong here.
The barker grinned. Glad to get rid of her, lady, so easy. I couldn’t
leave her do another show.
The group, pressing close about to protect her from the still curious
crowd, made their way slowly to the spot where the motor was parked.
Once in the car, Campaspe directed her chauffeur to drive to a hotel
further down the beach. The girl slid into the cushions, between John
and Campaspe. The others found places.
As the car started, the girl’s distrust awakened. Say, she cried,
what’s the idea?
You’re hungry, aren’t you?
I sure am.
Want something to eat?
God, yes.
Well, you’re going to get it. Keep quiet for a while. You’re not strong
enough to talk yet.
The child offered no further resistance, but at the entrance to the
dining-room of the hotel, Campaspe met with a new form of opposition.
It was early, and the room was practically empty, but the costume of
the young lady! Campaspe sent for the head-waiter.
You know Mr. Lorillard?
Certainly, madame.
Well, I am Mrs. Lorillard. This is the Duchess of Manchester. She is
studying Coney Island for her book on America, and it is her fancy to
dress like this.... Shall we go to the...? She named another hotel
nearby.
Certainly not, Mrs. Lorillard. The man became obsequious at once. Come
right in here, of course. He led them to a table near the window.
What do you want to eat? asked Paul.
Steak, pork chops, ham and eggs.... Whether from lack of breath or lack
of imagination the girl did not make the list longer.
Campaspe turned to the waiter. Bring her a glass of milk and some
toast and be quick about it. The girl is starving. Then to the
pseudo-enchantress of serpents: You can’t have everything you want now.
You’re not strong enough to eat it. It would make you ill. Now don’t
talk any more till you’ve swallowed some food.
The girl obeyed and remained silent, but her great green eyes wandered
curiously from face to face. When, after a very short interval, the
waiter returned with the order, she drank the milk at a single gulp,
and crunched the toast between her strong young jaws with an intensity
which betokened anxiety lest the food should be removed before she
could dispatch it. Campaspe and the boys were sipping glasses of
orange juice, into which Paul had dexterously inserted drops from the
field-glass cases which Ki had prepared.
Feel better now, kid? asked John Armstrong.
I feel all right.
What is your name? Campaspe asked.
Wotschures?
Campaspe Lorillard.
Zimbule O’Grady.
Zimbule O’Grady, exclaimed Paul, with delight.... Zim--
The girl misunderstood his tone. Don’t you like it? she flared.
Paul was quick to aver that he adored it.
Bunny, whose mind, as usual, was wandering, accidentally saved the
situation. He was sitting with his back to the corner, facing the
entrance. Idly watching people coming in, his attention was attracted
by a pair just about to sit down at a table across the room.
My God! ’paspe, he cried, look at Cupid!
Campaspe and the others turned to gaze across the long, vine-hung and
trellised room, at a short, fat man, slightly bald, who stood beside a
massive blonde, wearing a black dress, quivering with jet, an enormous
hat, trembling with paradise plumes, and from whose wrists dangled
enough gold-bags, vanity-cases, bracelets, chains, gold pencils, and
bangles to set a minor Sixth Avenue merchant up in business.
Campaspe smiled. What abominable taste Cupid has in women, she
remarked. He looks like an olive on a holiday. Then: I think we’d
better start back. We’ve had our adventure.
What about dinner? asked John Armstrong.
We’ll stop somewhere else for that.
Why not go back to the apartment? Paul suggested. Ki can run out for
some cold cuts and a salad.
Kalter Aufschnitt! Just the thing! cried Campaspe, delighted, and no
danger of seeing vulgar people!
Can he get some ham? Zimbule demanded hopefully.
Yes, and you will be ready to eat it then.
For the drive back, certain rearrangements of position were effected.
Bunny attempted to slip into the back seat beside Zimbule, but, with
some dexterity, Campaspe pushed John Armstrong between herself and the
girl, and, as Harold and Paul already occupied the strapontins, Bunny
was forced to take the seat by the chauffeur. He sulked. Harold was
feeling altogether confused and uncomfortable. Paul was highly amused.
Zimbule now seemed as strong as a young ox, as alert as a wren
searching for worms. She had completely forgone her momentary distrust,
and was behaving as only a young animal, bereft of self-consciousness,
can behave. In the restaurant, she and Bunny, from their positions of
propinquity, had indulged in quaint plays of words and hands. They
had even been a little rough at times. Now she called out to him, and
occasionally reached over to poke him in the back or to pull his hair.
Campaspe, for some curious and secret reason, was concentrating her
attention on John Armstrong, flattering the handsome stock-broker with
overt suavities until he responded with some of the clumsy intuition
of a Newfoundland dog. Bunny, too, found that his feet were getting
hot. These Rolls-Royces! But what a burrrrrrrrrrrrrrr for a tone-poem!
Inns and trees flew past. Farmhouses and fields, aqueducts, railroad
embankments. At last (it was late twilight), the illuminated city, the
tall gloomy towers, their pinnacles gleaming, the serrated silhouette
of Manhattan. John Armstrong ventured to take Campaspe’s hand in his.
She made no objection.
Ki opened the door with his habitual enigmatic smile, and when bidden
to seek refreshments, he smiled more blandly than ever. While Ki laid
the table, Paul was shaking cocktails, assisted by Harold, who cracked
the ice and squeezed the oranges. Zimbule was sitting on Bunny’s lap.
Oh, Ki! cried Campaspe, I forgot to tell Ambrose I wouldn’t need him
any more. Run down and tell him not to wait. I’ll walk home. Well--she
turned to the spread table--here we are again. As for you, young lady,
you go home with me, of course.
What will Cupid say? from Bunny.
Whatever he likes.
A dubious expression lurked between Zimbule’s eyebrows, and Bunny
crossed his fingers. The girl seemed as comfortable as if she had
been accustomed to pass every evening in Paul’s apartment, showing
no curiosity. She was, Campaspe noted, oblivious to surroundings.
Things, in themselves, meant nothing to her. Harold, she saw, was too
self-conscious and embarrassed to eat.
After supper, Campaspe settled herself on a couch, with John Armstrong
on the floor beneath her.
Lucky I came today, ’paspe. I thought I should never see you again.
It’s been six months since we met for the first time.
You really like me?
I adore you, ’paspe.
That’s right.... You Wall Street men! So substantial! No jaundice.
Paul turned to Harold: There won’t be many days like this.
It doesn’t matter. Father said....
Oh! I know. Strange bird, your father. I don’t mind telling you I’m not
wise.
What kind of women do you like? Campaspe was hailing Harold.
I like you. He was very much in earnest.
Very good for an amateur. You shall have your day, but this is John’s
night.
John squeezed her hand. You’re making fun of me, ’paspe.
She regarded him quizzically.
Towards two o’clock, Campaspe glanced at her wrist watch.
I must take the child home, she said. She must be tired.
Where is your child? Paul set down his cocktail glass. Both noted for
the first time that Zimbule was no longer in the room.
Where is Bunny? demanded John Armstrong.
Paul rose and strode across the floor to the closed bedroom door.
Opening it softly, he emitted a low chuckle. The others joined him.
The bed-lamp, shedding a soft amber glow, was still lighted. The
floor was strewn with spangled crimson skirts, stockings the shade of
blue-jay feathers, sequined caps, boots, trousers, shirts, chemises....
Under the sheet in Paul’s superb bed, with a crest-emblazoned
head-board shaped like the façade of a Dutch house and with its posts
terminating in bleeding pomegranates, in this bed, which had once been
the property of some Iberian grandee, lay Bunny and Zimbule, their bare
arms entwined round each other’s throats, their lips slightly parted,
their eyes closed. They were asleep.
C’est Vénus toute entière à sa proie attachée! whispered Paul.
Don’t disturb them, said Campaspe quietly. They look too cunning like
that. Zimbule passes the night here. John can take me home.
Harold’s expression was one of the wildest horror.
_Chapter V_
Campaspe lived on East Nineteenth Street, just around the corner
from Paul’s apartment in Gramercy Park. In the cool, June night
air, John Armstrong walked home with her. Directly they were alone
her manner changed almost imperceptibly; not that she seemed more
dignified--Campaspe, even in her most apparently careless moments,
always had dignity--; rather, she appeared to be preoccupied. As
they strolled down Irving Place John made an effort to arouse her
from her presumed lassitude. He started to speak and, indeed, did
form sentences, but her replies were abstract and distant, if not
entirely formal. Once or twice his hand edged nervously towards her
arm, and even touched it, but she gave no sign that she was aware of
this contact: she made no effort to move away, nor did she respond to
it. Her mood was exacerbating, and it roused in John a kind of dumb
anger and childlike helplessness. In a few brief moments, however,
they stood before her door. After the fashion of the houses on this
street, a short flight of steps descended to the entrance. He followed
her, without a plan, largely without hope, but with a blind animal
instinct, into the darkened vestibule and, as she was fitting her key
in the lock, drew her quickly to him and kissed her, perforce, on the
throat, as she had turned her head away.
Good-night, John, she said in an even voice, as she swung the door open.
Good God, Campaspe!
She slipped through the open doorway and shut the door behind her,
not ostentatiously slamming it in his face, but closing it softly.
Nevertheless, she noted, to John the effect wore the same air of
finality. Through the eyes in the back of her head she was aware that
he hesitated for a moment, dazed, before he walked away.
Campaspe, meanwhile, ascended the stairs, entered her chamber, and
pressed a button, flooding the pleasant room with light. The soft toile
de Jouy hangings at the windows blew gently back and forth with the
refreshing breeze. The bed with its delicate linen was spread open,
waiting for her. Frederika, her maid, following instructions, had long
since retired, and Campaspe did not awaken her. It was with rather a
sensuous feeling that she slipped off her clothes, and stood before a
long mirror, regarding herself. At length, she donned a night-gown of
French hand-manufacture and the colour of champagne, as filmy as it is
possible for such a garment to be made. Over her shoulders she drew a
négligé of the shade of the green orchid, as she sat down before her
dressing-table, an elaborate altar, laid with rose-jade cists for
cosmetics and crystal vials of French holy waters, blessed by Houbigant
and Coty. She combed out her short hair until it bristled on either
side of her face. Now she rubbed cold cream into her flesh, wiping away
the discarded artificial complexion with a towel. Then she carefully
made up again, applying fresh carmine to her lips, new rouge to her
cheeks, and outlining her eyelids with a blue pencil. This was her
invariable custom before retiring, and she often said to herself that
she looked at least as well in bed as she did at the opera. Presently,
still sitting before her dressing-table, she lighted a cigarette and
began to reflect, one knee resting lightly on the other, swinging her
leg backwards and forwards, from the foot of which a satin mule, the
toe sparkling with an infinity of tiny mirrors, depended.
John Armstrong: she really never could accustom herself to men who
smoked cigars. The manly American. Why, she wondered, was it deemed
manly in America to drink coffee and effeminate to drink tea?... A
strangely reluctant boy, Harold. It would be interesting to know why
he was so reluctant. She hoped, however, that he always would be. In
his reluctance lay his claim to charm.... Lucky Paul! And lucky Bunny!
Would he ever write fine music? she asked herself. Could a woman help
him do this? Could this woman? A fine animal. The finest animal she
had ever seen. Delicate and exquisite, and yet like an animal. She
considered: not like a doe, more like a tiger; graceful and exquisite
... and hungry! Campaspe smiled.
She recalled a phrase from A. E., which she had run across a day or so
earlier: I could not desire what was not my own, and what is our own
we cannot lose.... Desire is hidden identity.... Was life, she queried
of the alert face in her mirror, a straight or a zigzag line? Do we,
perhaps, live backwards and forwards, with memories of the past and
mystic visions of the future? She remembered how some one had said of
her that she was like a pleasant pool ... exposing a dormant silvery
surface ... or rippling placidly ... with shadows, which portended
hidden depths. No one, she reflected, save herself, knew how deep the
pool was, or what might lie concealed at the bottom.... Shadows! There
must be a philosophy of shadows! Shadows were the only realities. And
there were always shadows, but most people overlooked the shadow in
their search for the object which cast it. It was, she assured herself,
like searching for Richard Wagner, instead of listening to Tristan. She
smiled again as a phrase of Paul’s recurred to her: Campaspe does not
know the vices, she invents them! Invents them! Imagination, that was
the shadow of personality, assuredly the deepest enchantment! Savoir
n’est rien, imaginer est tout. Rien n’existe que ce qu’on imagine, the
sagacious fairy had remarked to Sylvestre Bonnard.... Campaspe sprayed
herself with Guerlain’s l’Heure Bleue.
She put out her cigarette and, casting aside her négligé and her mules,
got into bed. Pressing a button in the jewelled head of an enamelled
tortoise on her bed-table, she extinguished the lights, save that of
her reading lamp, a great iridescent dragonfly, suspended over her
bed. Propping herself up against the pillows, she examined the books
on her bed-table: plays by Luigi Pirandello, tales by Dopo Kunikida,
poems by the Welsh poet, Ab Gwilym, Jésus-la-Caille by Francis Carco,
Las Sonatas by Del Valle Inclán, and Aldous Huxley’s Mortal Coils....
She swept these from the table, leaving one or two at the bottom of the
pile. Choosing Rachilde’s l’Animale, she read a few lines, and then put
it aside. She opened a slight volume by Norman Douglas, and that met a
similar fate. Two paragraphs in Ronald Firbank’s Vainglory satisfied
her. She was not criticizing the authors of these works, but it was her
habit to insist that a book should satisfy a mood. With a sigh, again
she stretched her arm towards her bed-table, and her fingers closed on
a little volume bound in black leather: The Book of Common Prayer.
Opening at random, she happened on the service for St. Mark’s Day: I am
the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman. Every branch in me that
beareth not fruit he taketh away: and every branch that beareth fruit,
he purgeth it, that it may bring forth more fruit.... I am the vine,
ye are the branches.... She flipped the pages: Whither shall I go then
from thy Spirit: or whither shall I go then from thy presence? If I
take the wings of the morning: and remain in the uttermost parts of the
sea.... A veil of silver betraying violet shut the page from her eyes.
Instead, rose a vision of the sufficing peacocks designed by Gaston
Lachaise. She must have an avenue of these, carved from semi-precious
stones: chalcedony, sardonyx, malachite, onyx, pink and black, brown
and carnation jade, crystal, and chrysoprase.... The veil lifted and
exposed a brilliant flight of butterflies: the White-letter Hairstreak,
the Dingy Skipper, the Camberwell Beauty, and the Pearl-bordered
Fritillary, sapphire and emerald butterflies, and one of pale
silver.... And the book was open at the Veni Creator Spiritus:
Come, Holy Ghost, our souls inspire,
_And lighten with celestial fire_.
Thou the anointing spirit art,
_Who dost the sevenfold gifts impart_....
Campaspe fell asleep.
* * * * *
About three o’clock in the afternoon she awakened feeling refreshed.
She was one of those who awaken from the deepest sleep to immediate
consciousness, and she was at once aware that it was raining. The room
was gloomy, the curtains at the windows still drawn, but from the
bathroom came the sound of water pouring into her tub. Frederika, with
a curiously exact intuition, invariably anticipated the rising of her
mistress by two or three minutes. The maid entered.
Good afternoon, madame.
Good afternoon, Frederika. Campaspe smiled. She was in the best of
humours....
Frederika brought the Times and the morning mail on a tray, and then
retired to prepare Campaspe’s breakfast. Campaspe picked up the Times
and rapidly glanced over the headlines.... The Kaiser’s state carriages
bought by a funeral director caught her eye. How splendid, she turned
it over, to be borne to the tomb in such a manner, and she wondered if
these royal vehicles resembled the state coaches of Ludwig of Bavaria,
rococo, with Cupids and gilt.... She read of a blind man at Peekskill
who had attended an execution at Sing Sing so that he might sense
_the feeling of it_.... She fingered the envelopes on the tray.
One of them, in a strange handwriting, she opened. It was a bill from
a hat-shop on Fifty-seventh Street. She tore this up slowly. The other
letters she tossed unopened on her bed-table. Frederika had returned,
and Campaspe sipped her coffee.
Paul had promised to come in at five. Would he bring Harold? She
laughed to herself as she recalled the precipitate romance of Bunny and
Zimbule. Two babes in the woods, she mused aloud.... There were a few
orders for the cook, which Campaspe delivered through Frederika. She
never had trouble with servants. She had a system, which was to give
each of them a certain part of the work to do. When they had completed
their allotted tasks they could come or go as they liked. She put no
restrictions on their time. As for Frederika, a middle-aged Alsatian
woman, with a sad face, which reminded Campaspe irresistibly of Duse’s,
she adored her mistress, and was inventive in contriving ways to please
her.
After her bath, Campaspe dressed carefully but comfortably. She liked
to feel the stiff brush moving through her hair, and the pressure of
Frederika’s arm. She took quite as much pleasure in her body as she did
in her mind. Was not her body, indeed, her chief mental pleasure?...
An hour later she descended to the salon in a frock designed by Erté,
of cornflower-blue batiste, with soft butter-colour linen collar
and cuffs. The drawing-room was spacious and cool. Campaspe did not
like crowded rooms. There were few rugs, few pictures, few pieces of
furniture. The chairs and the couches were covered with toile de Jouy,
with a design printed in mauve, a design in which Cupid and Psyche
embraced in the company of nightingales and camellias. The pictures
on the walls were by Monticelli, Derain, Jennie Vanvleet Cowdery, and
Matisse. Near the high windows, looking down on the street below,
stood great jars of lustre ware in which were growing forced geranium
trees, nearly three feet tall, the stalks bare, bursting, at the top,
into clusters of scarlet blossoms framed in velvet-green. She moved to
the piano and touched the keys. On the rack was a jumble of sheets, in
great disorder, pages of this laid between pages of that, fox-trots and
jazz tunes, music by Manuel de Falla and Darius Milhaud. She mentally
noted her intention of purchasing some American Indian and Spanish
gipsy records for her victrola. She rang the bell. Are there brioches,
Frederika? Mr. Moody likes brioches. Yes, madame. Again it occurred to
her to wonder if Paul would bring Harold.
When at last he was announced, he had come alone. Sensitive to
impressions, he was immediately aware of her disappointment and of the
occasion for it.
You wanted me to bring Harold, he said. Of course, I intended to bring
him, but he has not been near me today. I’m afraid last night was more
than he expected.
I hope the poor boy is not too alarmed. He is reluctant, Paulet....
Frederika bore in the tea in a miniature alabaster pot, set, together
with three alabaster cups without handles, on an engraved and filigreed
alabaster tray. Campaspe was standing by the mantel. Raising an ancient
burnished copper mirror with a phœnix picked in the back to a level
with her face, she contemplated her reflection.
I’ve just finished my breakfast, Paulet ... I can’t drink any tea.
Pour some for yourself. She handled the mirror in a reverent, even an
affectionate, manner.
I had breakfast at ten, Paul groaned. The snake-charmer was hungry and
she began to prowl about for food!
Are they there still? Campaspe smiled at the memory of the pretty
picture.
No. After breakfast--Zimbule ate seven eggs--Bunny telephoned for a
taxi, and they departed together, after kissing me. They have sworn
eternal affection and they have begun housekeeping in Bunny’s apartment.
I’d like to have them here, Campaspe threw in, _almost_....
Almost ... is what I felt. It’s the way we both feel about so many
things.
It’s my philosophy ... almost. Campaspe replaced the mirror on the
mantelshelf.
Paul had walked to the window and was looking down on the rain-swept
street. Suddenly he exclaimed, How strange! A sailor with an umbrella.
Why? What? How strange? Campaspe joined him.
Sailors don’t carry umbrellas. Never. It’s an unwritten law in the
navy.
The sailor was now passing the house. The wind was high and as he
walked abreast of the window the umbrella tilted far back, exposing the
young man’s face.
The rule remains unbroken, Campaspe cried. It isn’t a sailor at all.
It’s the Duke!
The Duke?
The Duke of Middlebottom. I thought he was in Capri, but he’s always
travelling about in some disguise or other. How delightful of him to
come here. He will assist in Harold’s education.
Is he the man you told me about ... the man who gave those parties in
London?
Yes.
God help Harold!
Oh! We’ll look out for Harold. What a splendid prank. I wonder what can
he be up to?
* * * * *
A little later, after Paul had gone and it had grown quite dark,
Campaspe still lingered in the drawing-room. Frederika came in to light
the lamps, but Campaspe requested the maid to leave the room dark.
It was still drizzling outside and the drops of rain rattled against
the window-panes. The rain fell interminably this summer. Campaspe
sat quietly in a high-backed chair, resting her chin on her palm,
thinking.... Presently she heard a step in the hall.
Is that you, Cupid? she called.
Campaspe! He came in; slunk would be a better word.
She rang the bell, and asked Frederika to light the lamps. As the
room became brighter she looked at her husband; he was so small, so
tired, so worried, so generally insignificant. She also noted, with
some alarm, that he wore an air of conscious guilt, which betokened an
effort at explanation.
He began, indeed, at once: Campaspe, can you forgive me?
Forgive you? Her tone was gentle. For what?
For what I did last night.
She was very languid, very uninterested, very kind, a trifle impatient,
perhaps, with his stupidity.
There is, of course, nothing for which I need forgive you.
Campaspe!
What have I to forgive you?
You saw me with....
That! She laughed. Cupid, why will you always be so romantic? Will you
never believe me when I tell you that I don’t care in the least what
you do? I should never have married you if I had planned to worry about
you. I married you because I knew I should never have to worry about
you. You understand my views perfectly. Do just as you please, but I
will not have you making these scenes over nothing.
Campaspe.... Couldn’t things be different between us? Couldn’t you?...
She rose with a look of determination. It’s quite impossible....
Her tone was firmer now.... It’s no good going over it. You must
understand that it is quite impossible. We have our children, and it is
very comfortable living this way. So long as you are satisfied, I am
content, but anything else is quite impossible.
Campaspe!
She was leaving the room, but she turned back to face him. In her face
now there was an expression of definite displeasure. Her square jaw was
set hard.
Do, please, she said, stop pronouncing my name like a moonstruck savage.
Where are you going? His look was haunting, intense, pitiful, helpless.
I am going to change my dress.
Are you dining at home tonight? He was _almost_ pathetic.
I had intended to ... but now, I don’t know. I can’t bear you when
you’re sentimental.
I’ll promise ... he choked ... not to be.
And you’ll stop apologizing?
Yes.
And you’ll talk about something else than me?
Ye-es.
And do get over looking moonstruck, Cupid, and, for God’s sake, don’t
call me Campaspe again tonight!
She passed on through the open door, and ascended the stairs. Cupid
stared after her with the rapt, hopeless expression of a dog who has
howled in vain for two hours, and has at last lost faith in his power
to open doors.
_Chapter VI_
The morning after his first lesson with Paul Moody, Harold’s mail
contained an envelope which he tore open in febrile haste. Within
the envelope he found a sheet of folded note-paper, but there was no
writing thereon. The paper merely served as a garment for a crisp new
one hundred dollar bill. Not a word! She had already thanked him, he
recalled, but she might have found the heart to say something more. His
life, begun so pleasantly on his first day in New York, now seemed to
be caught in a perilous and inextricable tangle. The matchless Alice
Blake had vanished, while a more motley crew than he had imagined could
exist outside of literature had taken official possession of him. These
wasters, apparently, incessantly staggered about seeking sensation.
They had, it would appear, no other consistent aim. Sensation, in
itself, was at the farthest pole from Harold’s true desire. What he
thought he wanted was a little grey home in the east with Alice Blake.
Instead, he had been delivered, uncompromisingly, by an eccentric
father, whom he was beginning to hate, into the hands of Paul Moody, a
strange, cynical fellow. Worse even than Paul was his entourage, Bunny
Hugg, John Armstrong, and now, this beastly little animal, Zimbule
O’Grady. Would she and Bunny go on living together frankly at Paul’s,
or was that simply a lodging for the night? He could not answer this
question from his limited experience. He realized that the conventions
of this new existence, if there were any, were entirely unknown to
him. What--he summed up his distrust in one vague, generalizing
query--what did people do who lived as these people lived? What,
indeed, did they not do? Had they any beliefs or faiths? Had they any
responsibilities or duties or consciences? Were their days compounded
of visits to Coney Island and the discovery of snake-charmers? The
prey of such meditations--phantoms to which his tranquil past had not
accustomed him--, Harold felt terribly alone. There was, to be sure,
the horrible Drains, more horrible than ever in his massive attempts to
be sympathetic. And there was ... Mrs. Lorillard. But was she laughing
at him? At moments, in her frankness, her ease, her buoyant assertion
of personality, she had reminded him irresistibly of his aunt. Could
he, however, he wondered, count on her as an ally in this thicket of
foes? Were they, definitely, foes? In his ignorance he was unable to
decide. He only was aware of how uncomfortable they made him feel, and
he fortified himself with the assurance that the more they advanced,
the more he would retreat.
He determined, as the day wore on, to write to Alice. Sitting down
before his desk, he tried to compose a letter. It was a difficult
matter, he soon discovered, to compose a letter--the first--to a girl
with whom he was in love, a girl whom, at the same time, he scarcely
knew. Dear Miss Blake, he began; after a moment of perturbed reflection
he drew his pen through these words. Dear lady; too formal. Dear
friend; how absurd! She might even deny this. Dear stranger; more
absurd still. Finally, he decided to begin his letter without any
address at all, and now he found that he could write it quite easily.
You have frightened me, his pen traced. I know nobody in New York.
Absolutely nobody. I haven’t had time to tell you my story, and
so you will not understand, but I cannot hope ever to be formally
introduced to you. Couldn’t you, in some way, explain to your father?
I do so want to see you, to know you. We have met under such strange
circumstances that there has been no opportunity for a quiet talk.
Can’t you arrange something? _Please do._ I _must_ see you.
I eagerly await your reply.
He gave the letter to Drains to post, but immediately after Drains
had departed on this mission, he felt the need of going out himself.
A novel restlessness had besieged him. Drawing on his rain-coat, he
left the house. Without being particularly conscious of where he was
walking, without any desire to walk to any definite place, he directed
his steps towards Gramercy Park. The rain-drops pelted his face with a
welcome freshness. He did not want to go to Paul’s but he craved the
opportunity of talking to somebody, and to whom else could he talk?
Ki, at the door, informed him that Paul had gone out. Would he come
in and wait? He declined. Too nervous to sit still, he preferred to
walk around the iron-grating enclosing the park. The benches in the
enclosure were deserted. The trees, drenched by the windy rain, shook
drops of water on the vivid green grass.... Harold walked round and
round the iron fence. A policeman in a rubber-coat stood on the corner
of Lexington Avenue. On the other side of the park, Harold passed a
sailor under an umbrella.... What would Alice say? Would she answer his
letter at all? He felt completely miserable. Why couldn’t his father
give him a position in his own home where he could meet people? He was,
he assured himself, to all intents and purposes an outcast. He returned
to Paul’s. Paul had not yet come in. Ki smiled. Would the gentleman
wait? Harold again declined. Round and round the grating. The rain
continued to fall. It was twilight.
Drains, too, was smiling, as he opened the door for Harold. How could
everybody smile? And they all smiled cynically, as if they knew some
secret of which he was not aware. Did they all understand why life was
so cruel? Did they all comprehend the jest of the cruelty? The evening
was almost a replica of his first evening in his own apartment. Drains
asked what he would have for dinner ... and gave him chops, etc. Again
he went early to bed with books and magazines which he did not read.
He could not tolerate this waiting. He, who had been patient all his
life, was becoming impatient. He lifted the receiver from the hook
... and put it back again. She had asked him, he forced himself to
remember, not to telephone. Drains departed for the night. The driving
rain was still beating against the window-panes. The lightning flashed
occasionally and there were heavy crashes of thunder. Harold shuddered.
How lonely he was! He who had been alone so much formerly, now could
not suffer being alone. His circumstances had been so different then.
Now he felt that the world was against him, had separated him from the
one person he wanted to see. His heart almost stopped beating when the
telephone bell tinkled. It was Paul. Harold’s voice registered his
disappointment. Yes, he had called. No, nothing in particular. Yes, he
would drop in tomorrow.
What are we going to do? Harold asked desperately.
Anything you like. We’ll decide when you arrive.
Then, quite suddenly, after the naïve manner of youth, Harold cried
out for sympathy: Can I come over tonight?
Sorry, old man, Paul answered; it’s quite impossible. I have a
rendezvous in a doss-house with my aged grandmother.
Realizing that he had made a mistake, Harold mumbled a good-bye. Tears
streamed out of the corners of his eyes. He felt more alone, more
miserable than ever. At this moment, he would have been glad to see
even Drains. He tried to read, but nothing held his interest. At last,
he got up and walked about, his restlessness increasing as he fed it.
Suddenly his eye fell on a carafe, half-full of brandy, standing on the
side-board. Grasping it, he poured out enough to fill a wine-glass,
and, with much gulping, he contrived to swallow the burning fluid. Then
and then only was he able to fall asleep.
* * * * *
The answer to his letter was delivered by messenger in the afternoon.
The envelope, he noted, was addressed in a different hand from that
which had penned the envelope containing the hundred dollar bill. Still
it must be.... He tore it open. His own note, the top of the envelope
neatly slit, tumbled out first. Then a letter:
Sir:--
My daughter has informed me of the manner in which you have become
implicated in her affairs. I take this occasion to thank you for
your assistance, if you have given assistance, but I must ask you
not to pursue my daughter further. If you seek more than gratitude
for what you have done, I shall be glad to send you a check. Under
no circumstances, however, are you to address another letter to my
daughter. Any such I shall be obliged to open and, if you persist in
making her the butt of your unwelcome attentions, I shall be obliged
to pay a visit to the police court myself.
very truly yours,
+BECKFORD BLAKE+.
What an insult! The hideous mortification of receiving such a letter
burned Harold’s cheeks with shame. And poor Alice. How must she feel?
What had her father done to her? Then he suddenly remembered that he
had been on the verge of telling the whole story to Paul. If he had
seen Paul last evening he certainly would have told him, and Paul would
have laughed. Paul surely would laugh at this story; so would Drains.
With a sort of furtive intuition he began to believe that no women
were innocent in the eyes of Paul and Drains. Harold felt more than
ever a martyr. His life, which, it seemed, began with a mistake on the
day he was born, would, he was convinced, never shape itself. All his
existence, apparently, would continue to be one long mistake. Again,
quite spontaneously, the idea recurred to him that he hated his father
for, however unconsciously, shaping it for him. It wasn’t, he began to
realize, his college years which had proved his present undoing, but
his early bringing up, the inadequate and unworldly supervision of Aunt
Sadi and Persia Blaine. And this was his father’s doing! To be sure,
his aunt and Persia had meant well; they had loved him ... but they had
not been capable of preparing him for the perils he had to face.
* * * * *
Paul, that day, and for several days following, was rather inclined
to be distrait, and Harold, silent concerning the only matter which
really interested him, on his part found comparatively little to say.
He encountered Campaspe on several occasions, and once or twice, he
fancied, he saw her looking at him with sympathy, but they were never
alone, and mainly she was preoccupied with gossip about the Duke
of Middlebottom, who had arrived, unaccountably, in New York _in
June_.
June, he had remarked to Campaspe, is the London season; why not make
it the New York season as well? I told him, Campaspe repeated in her
narrative to Paul, that all he would need was an impresario to produce
an opera or two, three or four ladies of society, and a climate. His
answer was direct. He said, and it is perfectly true, that New York is
cooler than London in the summer, that wherever I was there was sure to
be society, and that he would give the opera himself. He is committed
to some such plan.
Bunny and Zimbule, also, offered matter for discussion. They were much
talked about and, when one wasn’t talking about them, they ran in to
talk about themselves. They were settled in Bunny’s small apartment in
Greenwich Village and were living a life in which love and ambition
played equal parts. Bunny was composing his two bar songs and piano
pieces, and he had succeeded, without much difficulty, in securing
Zimbule a situation on the stage for, after a day’s reflection, she had
decided that she would rather go on the stage than do anything else.
She spent days in Campaspe’s motor, and out of it in smart shops,
outfitting herself at Campaspe’s expense. She was aware of her beauty
and not without taste, it was discovered, when it came to adorning
it, withal this taste was somewhat bizarre. She had begun by assuming
such ready-made dresses as could be easily summoned from the backs of
models at Bendel’s, Tappé’s and Gilbert Clark’s, but very soon, under
the spell of the compliments which her really exquisite loveliness won
from the lips of the attendants in these shops, she was encouraged by
Campaspe, whose desire in life was to amuse herself, and whose purse
was sufficiently heavy to make the carrying out of this desire facile,
to go a little further along the route of self-expression. Campaspe’s
philosophy was as sure at this point as at another. It was only, she
frequently said, those who expected to find amusement in themselves who
wandered about disconsolate and bored. Amusement was to be derived from
watching others, when one permitted them to be entirely themselves.
One was born with oneself and, if one were intelligent, one got to know
oneself thoroughly at the age of four. Thereafter, a life of boredom
intervened until the grave yawned, unless one surrounded oneself
with people who were individual enough to comport themselves with
some eccentricity, not to say perversity. Zimbule was not cut to any
conventional pattern. She filled Campaspe’s bill.
Soon the child began to notice the difference between stuffs, the
difference between patterns and colours. Warm as it was, she affected
an interest in kinkob and camel’s-hair shawls, and she became aware of
the sacred names of Reboux, Premet, Chéruit, and Maria Guy.
I adore her! Campaspe ejaculated one day. I can never cease to thank
God that we captured her from those embracing snakes. She is the most
amusing person we’ve ever discovered. She’s wholly natural, wholly an
animal. I’ve never met a woman like her. When she’s hungry she eats;
when she’s sleepy, she sleeps; and when she’s amorous, she loves. She’s
imitative like an animal too. Having observed that I wear geraniums,
she’s clever enough to realize that geraniums are not her flower. When
I called for her the other day she was sporting a great bouquet of
orchids. Bunny, of course, can never pay for them and so I have taken
to sending her orchids every morning, developing an expensive taste.
Her next lover may be rich enough to afford them. But you can never
tell with Zimbule. Animals are not interested in money. If she falls in
love with a rich man it will be an accident.
Bunny, it was certain, was deeply in love with Zimbule. He had no eyes
for her eccentricities, but he was delighted that Campaspe had dressed
her up. The practical side of these attentions dawned on him more fully
when she was engaged, solely on her looks, for a good part in support
of a female star. Zimbule took this engagement entirely as a matter of
course. Everything with Zimbule was a matter of course. She ate, slept,
lived, loved as a matter of course. And, quite naturally, like the
little animal she was, she never thought at all.
* * * * *
One afternoon, the Duke of Middlebottom appeared at Paul’s apartment,
and Harold was astonished by the grace and charm of Drains’s former
master. The Duke immediately manifested an interest in Harold which
appeared to be sincere. As for Harold, the Duke appealed to him from
the beginning, without giving him the sense, which the others made
him feel so constantly, that he was being made game of. The Duke was
younger than Harold had expected to find him. Somehow, Harold had
thought of all Dukes as middle-aged men, and this particular Duke was
but scantily past thirty. He was a tall, blond English-man; his hair,
of course, was curly; his cheeks were rosy, and his eyes were blue. He
was always dressed to perfection, wore a monocle, and had the habit
of flaunting three cornflowers as a boutonnière. His trousers flared
at the bottom and his small feet were encased in round-toed French
boots with cloth tops. He had very ugly hands, thick across, with
short, stubby fingers with spatulate terminations, and nails which
seemed never to have permitted the attentions of a manicure. Not only
were they unevenly clipped; often, they were actually dirty. Another
peculiarity of the Duke was that he stammered, but this apparent defect
actually added to his attractiveness. His name was eponymous for a
certain group that frequented the Café Royal in London and with his
crest on his stationery was the motto: A thing of beauty is a boy for
ever. The Duke made it a point to live by the Julian Calendar, thirteen
days behind the Gregorian. In this wise he contrived to evade all
unsatisfactory engagements, especially if they were complicated in any
way by daylight-saving time, an American refinement of which he was
utterly ignorant.
Harold found him very delightful and wondered if Drains’s strictures
were part of that valet’s demoniacal cynicism. He judges everybody,
thought Harold, in terms of himself and his own rotten life. It was
plainly to be seen that the Duke of Middlebottom never entertained an
evil thought.
Campaspe and the Duke were old friends, and they talked of Capri, from
whence the Duke had recently emerged, the new English plays, the best
of which, the Duke appeared to believe, were by Beaumont and Fletcher,
Poiret’s inventions for the grues at Auteuil, Cocteau’s café, Le Bœuf
sur le Toit, and kindred subjects. He was a charming and engaging
conversationalist, and the most winning quality of his manner was its
utter frankness and apparent absence of guile. Harold had been fully
prepared, by advance reports, to meet an ironic epigrammatist, who
perhaps removed his coat in public to inject a shot of morphia into his
arm. The Duke seemed free from a mania for exhibitionism. Not only was
he delightful to Harold, he was equally at his ease with Paul, and he
had bestowed upon Zimbule, whom he playfully described as a sciurine
oread, the accolade of his particular interest. He had made her his
friend at once by promising to present her with a long string of coral
beads of the valuable and rare colour of the berries of wintergreen.
At their first meeting, she had challenged his monocle.
What’d you do if it dropped and broke? she asked.
For answer, the Duke relaxed the muscles around his eye, and the glass
fell to the floor, shivering into fragments. Immediately, he took
another glass from his waistcoat pocket, and adjusted it.
The Duke questioned Harold regarding his tastes, and told him long
stories of harmless adventures among the Italian peasantry, in which
shepherd boys and bersaglieri figured in sympathetic guises. Sheep
were saved, and ladies escorted through perilous mountain-passes,
while banditi rained down shot from convenient posts above. There was
also a harrowing, but amusing, account of the birth of a child in the
compartment of a railway carriage during the prolonged passage through
the Simplon Tunnel. Only once did Harold betray what he thought was
a trace of affectation in the Duke when that one, being questioned,
declared that he had never seen the Blue Grotto.
But you have just come from Capri!
The boy does not believe you, Campaspe interposed. Ronald never lies,
Harold. Think a moment. How long have you been in New York?
Nearly three weeks.
Have you seen the Statue of Liberty?
No.
Or Grant’s Tomb?
No.
Or the Metropolitan Museum of Art?
No-o.
Or Poe’s house?
No.
Or the Bronx Zoo?
No.
Or Fraunces’ Tavern?
No.
Or the Aquarium?
No.
And you have been here three weeks. The Duke spent two or three weeks
in Capri and yet you expect him to have seen the Blue Grotto!
During the progress of this dialogue there was a crescendo in Harold’s
abashment, but the Duke only smiled and did not seem to be at all put
out.
Youth, he remarked, is always incredulous. The Firebird, however,
hasn’t t-t-t-told you the whole truth. I pass t-t-two or three weeks in
Capri every year, and yet I have never seen the B-B-B-Blue Grotto.
I believe you, said Harold fervently.
I would never see Mount Ætna at T-T-Taormina, or Vesuvius at Naples if
it were possible to escape them. But they see me first and then they
insist that I look.
Why, asked Harold, quite ready to let this subject drop, do you call
Campaspe the Firebird?
It seems natural, even inevitable, to do so. Her p-p-plumage is so
brilliant. It glistens and d-d-dazzles.
Oh!
Wait. There is more. I am not thinking of the Zhar-Ptitsa of Russian
legend. Rather I am making an impious in-t-t-terpretation of certain
passages in the Comte de Gabalis. Probably you have not yet read that
fascinating seventeenth century satirical romance in which the author,
the Abbé de Montfaucon de Villars, was undoubtedly poking fun at the
occultists. Ironically enough, the modern Rosicrucians have taken the
b-b-b-book seriously and use it as their B-B-Bible. In this delicious
capolavoro, the Comte discourses with the author, somewhat after the
fashion of .... Well, certainly such works as W. H. Mallock’s New
Republic and Aldous Huxley’s Crome Yellow stem from this book.
The Comte recommends marriage with one of the immortal beings who
people the elements rather than with a human; he advises cohabitation
with the nymphs who swim in the water, the gnomes who inhabit the
earth, the sylphs who fly in the air, or the salamanders who thrive
in the fire. Campaspe, I am convinced, has married a salamander and
has embraced his element. She b-b-b-burns like a clear white flame,
using our emotions for fuel. Wherever there is passion, Campaspe’s
incandescence increases, but she remains faithful, under all
circumstances, to her salamander. Occasionally, in one of her soaring
flights, she drops a fiery feather, and some poor mortal mistakes it
for the living bird.
But I have married a mortal, Campaspe objected.
Your children are salamanders, was the Duke’s final word.
Harold was uncertain whether to tell Drains that he had met the Duke,
but Drains saved him the trouble. As he brought in Harold’s coffee one
morning, the man remarked:
I saw my old master yesterday, sir.
The Duke .... Yes, I know. I’ve met him. He isn’t a bit the sort you
described.
Drains raised his eyebrows.
I described the Duke! he exclaimed. I told you that I had been in his
employ, sir, but I scarcely permitted myself to go further.
You told me why you had left him, dared Harold.
Drains’s face had regained its customary imperturbability.
I cannot, of course, contradict you, sir, but I assure you, sir, that
you are labouring under some misapprehension. I could never have
discussed the affairs of the Duke. He is a fine gentleman, sir.
Well, for once we agree, said Harold, and he began to wonder if he had
misjudged Drains.
_Chapter VII_
Ronald, Duke of Middlebottom, had taken a furnished house on West
Twelfth Street for the summer, against the advice of friends who had
urged the advantages of Sutton Place. The owner of this property, a
woman, had individual taste, somewhat influenced by the Italian of
various epochs and styles, and the Duke had added his own touches
here and there. The drawing-room, a vast chamber on a level with
the street-door, approached by a flight of steps, extended the full
depth of the house. The walls of this room were stained a curious
olive-green, and the windows were curtained with stiff draped
silver-grey taffeta, bound with narrow bands of turquoise-blue. Silver
and crystal candelabra were placed at convenient intervals along the
walls, but no central chandelier depended from the ceiling. On the
marble mantelshelf stood two Venetian glass Ethiopians, clad in white,
clasping baskets of multi-coloured crisp glass flowers, from the midst
of which emerged white wax candles. On a long, polished walnut table
there were more glass figures, capricious examples of the art of the
verrier, a Spanish Infanta of rosso Murano and black, a white-spotted
black deer, a saucy red-lipped Columbine. The chairs and divans,
possibly of Italian renaissance design, were covered for the season
with a gay Derryvale linen. A few pictures hung on the walls: a bowl
of zinnias by Florine Stettheimer, orchids by Charles Demuth, and
magnified, scarlet cannas by Georgia O’Keeffe. The hallway, painted
a bright Italian blue, sprinkled with tiny blue stars, ran parallel
with the drawing-room from the front to the back of the house, leading
down a flight of steps into the garden in the rear, where a shell-walk
wandered in and out between tiny beds of azure flowers, planted under
symmetrical chestnut-trees and catalpas with their heart-shaped
leaves and ridiculously long and slender seed-pods, to a fountain
in the middle of the back wall, a fountain inspired by Nijinsky’s
interpretation of Mallarmé’s faun. A huge umbrella, striped orange and
black, almost like the canopy of a pavilion, protected a black table
and chairs from the sunglare. The dining-room was in the basement and
it had been the happy fancy of its mistress to hang the walls with
an old-fashioned paper, printed in pink and white stripes after the
manner of stick candy. On these walls she had fastened by means of
pins a few ribald covers torn off Le Rire and La Vie Parisienne. The
prim little black marble mantelshelf held half a dozen painted sugar
statuettes, ravished from a Houston Street pasticceria, representing
Sicilian banditi, not unmenacing, and bland shepherdesses with thick
ankles, guarding shapeless sheep. The table, at dinner, was usually a
confusion of fragile, opaque Bristol Glass, with decorations of birds
and flowers, old Staffordshire china, and ornaments of artificial
grapes and crystal, laid on the bare walnut board. Sometimes a great
bronze Buddha panted on his back in a bowl of nasturtiums, his
hexagonal belly looming high above the posies.
The second floor was divided into two bedrooms, the walls of one of
which were hung with an old eighteenth century paper, depicting rather
fanciful South Sea Islanders enjoying themselves in the shade of great
palm-trees, while other cannibals with formidable spears navigated
the sea in extravagant canoes. This was the back chamber, and because
it overlooked the garden and was free from the noises of the street,
the Duke had chosen it for his own. When the Duke moved into a hotel
room, the decorations of which were distasteful to him, he frequently
sent for a paper-hanger and ordered the room repapered. He did not go
so far in this instance, but he had contrived to conceal a good part
of the pseudo-Marquesan landscape with shungwa, a special class of
Japanese prints, erotic and often obscene. The room was always in the
uttermost disorder, as most of his personal belongings and the books
and pictures and knick-knacks which he was constantly picking up were
littered within its four walls. A gate-legged table in the corner
served as an uneasy resting place for a bronze torso by Dujam Penic,
the Serbian sculptor, a pair of yellow-green glass candlesticks in the
shape of inverted dolphins, De Berg van Licht by Louis Couperus, boxes
of cravats from Charvet, consignments of pleasant odours from Bichara,
and a hand-illuminated quotation from Goethe:
Hätte Gott mich anders gewollt,
Er hätte mich anders gebaut;
neatly framed in gold. As the Duke had a fancy for frequently changing
his clothes, it was well-nigh impossible for the Ceylonese servants,
tall, brown fellows with combs in their straight ebony hair, to put
away the procession of trousers, coats, boots, and stockings which
marched over the floor and the chairs. The front chamber was a serene
little Louis XIV room, and always gave the appearance of never
having been occupied, even after some one had been living in it for
several days. These apartments were connected by the bath, panelled
in alternating squares of malachite and lapis lazuli, with a tub of
rose-jade with golden faucets. The floor was paved with diamond-shaped
bloodstone flags. Two full-length mirrors, set in the wall, were backed
with black instead of quicksilver. The long dressing-table, gilded,
and surmounted by an oval, black mirror, held a mysterious array of
luxurious objects and a profusion of crystal bottles with gold tops.
The Duke admitted frankly that he had taken the house for the sake of
this bathroom, and confessed that he passed most of his time there
when he had no guests. It may be added, however, that the Duke was
seldom alone. The third floor the owner had transformed--old New York
houses are as capable of countless metamorphoses as Ovidian gods--into
a miniature theatre, the walls of which had been decorated by Paul
Thévenaz with dying stags, agile monkeys, wriggling serpents, gorgeous
macaws, iridescent humming-birds, mad huntsmen, bayaderes, odalisques,
and Hindu Rajahs. The drop-curtain was of silver cloth into which had
been woven an infinity of semi-precious stones, in a conventional
Persian design. It was in this theatre that the Duke proposed to give
New York its season of summer opera.
* * * * *
On a sultry day, late in July, Campaspe, in a clinging garment
of chartreuse swiss, with a Lucie Hamar hat of geranium-red,
flesh-coloured stockings, and ivory kid shoes with vermilion heels,
sat with the Duke and Paul under the great umbrella in the garden,
discussing plans for the opera. Out of Jacobite ale-glasses with
air-twist stems they were sipping that pleasant hot-weather mixture,
gin and ginger beer, cooled with ice and flavoured with limes. A bowl
of chopped ice, several unopened stone bottles of Idris, and a blue
pitcher half-full of Gordon gin stood on the table between them. The
Duke’s suit, too, was of blue, the coolest of colours, he explained,
exactly the colour to compete with the sirocco. And, he went on, as
was his wont, exactly the wrong colour for a theatre. A theatre should
never be blue, for a theatre must be warm; even in summer, the effect
of a theatre should be warm.
Ronald dear, I agree with you, said Campaspe. We cannot discuss that.
Anyway _your_ theatre isn’t blue, so there would be nothing to
discuss even if I felt argumentative. But the opera....
Well, of course, the Duke began tentatively, I don’t mean exactly an
opera. Rather a p-p-p-play, b-b-b-but the kind of play you don’t see
in New York. Not modern either. Whenever I hear the word I think of
Cocteau’s phrase, a nigger prostrate before the telephone. Everything
one called modern a year or two ago is old-fashioned: Freud, Mary
Garden, Einstein, Wyndham Lewis, Dada, glands, the Six, vers libres,
Sem Benelli, Clive Bell, radio, the Ziegfeld Follies, cubism, Sacha
Guitry, Ezra Pound, The Little Review, vorticism, Marcel Proust, The
Dial, uranians, Gordon Craig, prohibition, the young intellectuals,
Sherwood Anderson, normalcy, Guillaume Apollinaire, Charlie Chaplin,
screens in stage d-d-d-d-decoration, Aleister Crowley, the Russian
Ballet, fireless cookers, The Chauve Souris, Margot Asquith, ectoplasm,
Eugène Goossens, the tango, Jacques Copeau, Negro dancing! Let’s not be
modern. Let’s turn back to the great period around 1910--even a trifle
earlier.
The Frogs? suggested Campaspe.
Oh! No croaking.
Lysistrata?
That’s an idea. You are warmer.
Less blue.
Redder. Oranger. Lysistrata! Perhaps. But I should prefer something
more curious. I like B-B-B-Bacon’s phrase: There is no excellent beauty
that hath not some strangeness in the p-p-p-proportion.... He appeared
to ponder.... I have it! Rachilde’s l’Araignée de Cristal.
The Crystal Spider.
Firebird! You understand French.
I seem to foresee this play: cold and perverse.
Blood.
Cold blood.
There’s a mother and a boy who is afraid of mirrors. I will play the
b-b-boy and you will p-p-p-play the mother.
Frozen blood. No mother for me! Out! What else?
Ronald Firbank’s Princess Zoubaroff is perhaps more colorado.
Oh! Firbank.
I hear, hopefully put in Paul, who did not understand Spanish, that he
is an indecent writer.
Every alternate line is decent, exclaimed the Duke. A master of
wordcraft! He’s writing something new--I forget the name--: Mackerel
Fishing in the Bois de Boulogne; perhaps that’s it--or Cocktails.
Is it about America? asked Paul.
Possibly. Le vit est dur partout.
Campaspe ended this: The Princess Zoubaroff is an idea. If we give that
we must ask all New York.
And cable Ronald to come over to make bows.
Ronald cables Ronald.
The Duke grinned at the possibility as he lifted his glass
automatically to search for the rough pontil mark. The group was now
disturbed by a sudden raucous tumult at the other end of the garden.
The white dachshund and the golden Pomeranian were engaged in a noisy
dispute. Presently two Ceylonese servitors appeared and, separating the
combatants, bore them yelping into the house.
Terrible d-d-d-dogs! remarked the Duke. I call them Dédé and Eskal
Vigor. Ils ont de mauvaises mœurs. He returned to the subject under
discussion: I’ve really made up my mind.
I was sure of it, Campaspe declared. What is it?
Nozière’s l’Après-midi Byzantine.
I don’t know it.
Certainly, you don’t. It’s in one act and no costumes: cool for the
actors, and hot for the spectators. Grues and a charioteer and a boy.
La scène est à Byzance. Le principal meuble est un siège bas qui
ressemble à un lit.
You will play the boy.
I will play the charioteer. In Paris a girl played the b-b-b-boy:
Madeleine Carlier. It is b-b-better so. It makes the piece more
perverse.
And what am I to play?
Xantippe or Myrrha.... Zimbule must play the boy, Clinias.
You seem more interested in casting Zimbule than in arranging a part
for me, Campaspe bantered.
You shall play Myrrha. It is the b-b-b-best rôle.
Do I have scenes with you?
With me, with Zimbule, with everybody. There are two servants, but
their parts present no difficulty, and a dancer. I can arrange that. A
Byzantine Afternoon! What an opera for New York! July is already the
season.
If you can get an audience, put in Paul.
Ah! They will come in f-f-from the mountains. They will rush over from
London. The Aquitania will b-b-bulge.
There’s no part for me, I take it, Paul remarked.
You can be a stage-hand; Harold, an electrician.
He will have to join the union, said Campaspe. Then, more seriously,
There’s something there. None of you understands Harold. I like the boy.
So do I, said Paul.
Firebird, we all d-d-do, protested the Duke. And I understand him. He
is like a silver flamingo.
A silver flamingo?
Yes, glowing, glamorous, shining--like Galahad in armour--and strange,
aloof; he d-d-does not mate with the rose flamingos.
Campaspe smiled and smoothed out her frock. You are describing
yourself, Ronald, she said.
You, Firebird, he went on, paying no heed to her interruption as he was
in the mood for similizing, you are the crystal spider. You draw them
all into your net: these Harolds and Bunnies and Zimbules. What a crew!
Where do you find them?
It’s my life to find them, but I never hunt.
He was, apparently, bent on comparison, for he continued, ponderingly,
A catalyst, perhaps.... Yes, certainly, a catalyst.
What, asked Paul, is a catalyst?
An agent which effects a chemical reaction while appearing to take no
part in it, the Duke replied.
Campaspe enjoyed talking nonsense with the Duke. She wondered if
they all were aware how different she was with each of them, how she
reflected their respective temperaments. It was one of her purposes
in life to act the part of mirror. Was it a black mirror today? she
questioned herself.
* * * * *
Plans for the play progressed. The Duke thought of Drains, who, it
appeared, had a talent for light magic. He could make rabbits appear
from hats, and balance an eel on his left ear. Zimbule was delighted to
assist. Her initial adventure in the theatre had proved sufficiently
diverting. She had been rehearsing with a brown-haired star who
objected that Zimbule’s hair was too near her own colour. At the next
rehearsal Zimbule appeared in a yellow wig. The star now developed a
decided aversion to wigs. Zimbule dyed her hair. The star discharged
her. I don’t blame the dame, the girl said. She’s forty-five and she
looked ninety ’side o’ me. I showed her up. At any rate, Zimbule was
now free to appear in the Duke’s opera.
The Duke began to exhibit a lively interest in the composition of
the audience. There should be an audience of tired business men, he
announced, American business men. It will amuse them; it will wake them
up, he explained.
You have such romantic ideas about America, Campaspe expostulated. Is
there such a thing as a business man in America? I suppose so. Cupid,
even, does something down town. But we try to keep that sort of thing
in the background. We try not to be aware of it. It is the smart thing
to do nothing, or, at any rate, to appear to do nothing. It is even a
trifle démodé to write or paint. Of course, she observed in conclusion,
there are people from Chicago who might do.
Oh! those furtive people from Chicago! Paul exclaimed. Those wicked,
rich Chicagoans, who come to New York to be naughty, like American
sophomores in Paris. Once here, you would imagine that they devote
their whole lives to libidinous adventures. But if you see them back
in Chicago, I am told, they are respectable fathers of families who
dine at home every night, and eat breakfast across the table from their
wives. Those middle-western group breakfasts! And if a word is used
that the very children speak in the streets of Vienna, these Chicago
business men blush.
Why, Paul! Campaspe cried, you must feel about Chicago business men the
way Laura feels about Jews. When did you meet these monsters?
Meet them! Paul shrieked, waving his jade cigarette-holder about in the
air. Meet them! How did you get such an idea? Meet them, indeed!
The Duke, slightly bewildered by this discourse, attempted to pull the
conversation back into its proper channel.
You know perfectly well what I mean, he said. I want a reaction. I
don’t want a lot of b-b-b-b-bored lollers out in front.
You’d better ask the Brooklyn Elks, Paul suggested.
Or the Campfire Girls, put in Campaspe.
Or the Academy of Arts and Letters, alternated Paul.
I don’t think, the Duke asseverated solemnly, that you and Paul
appreciate your great country. The Hackensack meadows always remind me
of the Roman Campagna, and yet I find that no one drives about in them.
What are you going to have to eat? Campaspe asked by way of creating a
diversion.
Pickled walnuts, p-p-p-p-potted b-b-blackbirds, plovers’ eggs....
Paul began, unreasonably, to grin. I don’t know what reminds me, he
said, but have you heard about Bunny? He’s had Zimbule’s name tattooed
on his person so cunningly that it can only be deciphered under certain
conditions.
* * * * *
The rehearsals were very strange. A friend of Paul’s had been called
in to play Xantippe. After the cast was arranged the Duke remembered
that he had not yet translated the play. He began to do so, and then he
conceived the idea of leaving his own part in French.
I will play the charioteer in French, while the other characters play
in English, he announced. It will add a fillip!
But Zimbule objected to this proposal, refusing point-blank to play her
scene with him in any such manner.
The Duke began to enjoy directing the piece.
Firebird, please say that line again; a little more emphasis on the
word love.... Miss O’Grady, please stand down centre d-d-during this
scene.
But this was unnecessary. Zimbule was always standing down centre. It
was difficult, if not impossible, to persuade her to stand anywhere
else. She took the best position as naturally as an old stock star
would have taken it.
When the Duke, enamoured of directing, dropped out of the cast,
Harold was drafted to fill his place. Never having acted before, the
boy was appallingly self-conscious, all arms and legs, nor can it be
said that he was an ideal choice for the rôle of a debauched athlete
of the arena, bent on persuading his mistress to deceive him. He was
serious, however, and came to his second rehearsal letter-perfect.
A new phenomenon caught the eye of the observant Mrs. Lorillard:
Zimbule, seemingly having exhausted Bunny’s attractions, appeared to be
developing an interest in Harold. Campaspe took her on another shopping
tour.
Never, she was explaining, wear clothes with designs in the cloth. You
are much too beautiful for that. Wear the plainest, simplest things.
Give your face a chance.
But you ... began Zimbule.
I am not beautiful, Campaspe replied. I can wear what I please. Even
so, I am careful. I once owned a watch, the case of which was cut from
a single sapphire. I christened it at a dinner in Rome, but I never
wore it again thereafter. It was too marvellous. I could not compete
with it.
Zimbule gazed at her with admiration. The girl was extremely adaptable,
took everything in. In a month she had learned more about dressing,
walking, standing than some women ever know. Even her speech was
improving.
Never keep your rooms too dark, Campaspe continued. Bright rooms are
best. Bright lights. Always sit facing the window. Then there will be
no shadows and shadows across the face make even the youngest of us
look old. So few women know this.
Zimbule drove away from Bendel’s in a new Lanvin frock, black
and severely plain. With her yellow hair and green eyes, she was
sufficiently striking but she instinctively knew how to wear clothes,
and was not even lacking in a certain kind of distinction. Campaspe, on
the whole, was proud of her.
In the motor Campaspe ventured a question, What is Bunny doing?
Oh! Bunny! I don’t know. Writing music, I suppose. There was a touch of
petulance in the reply.
Nice boy.
Is he? Zimbule, obviously, was uninterested. There was a short pause
before she said, Mrs. Lor--Campaspe, do you know Harold very well?
I’ve known him such a short time, Campaspe parried.
But what a kid!
I applaud you.
I like him.
Campaspe veiled her curiosity. So do I, was all she said.
At rehearsal that evening she observed that Zimbule had begun her
siege. Bunny, brought thither to arrange or compose the music for the
Duke’s opera, sulked in a corner. The Duke had evolved the idea of
reviving music by Salvatore Viganò, music entirely antipathetic to the
mood of the piece. Bunny, on the contrary, wanted to fit the play with
music by Arthur Honegger, or possibly something by himself.
The Duke shrugged his shoulders. Zimbule was whispering to the
embarrassed Harold in a corner.
I think, growled Bunny, I’d like to write some modern jazz for this
show.
The Duke began to brighten. That, he remarked, would be as good as
music by Viganò. Jazz for a B-B-B-Byzantine play! He urged Bunny to
carry out his idea.
Bunny scowled. He had no idea. His temper was one of opposition, and
he had given voice to the first contradiction that had surged into his
brain. His mind, on the whole, was not on jazz. Zimbule was wearing a
gown of rose charmeuse, without a single decoration or ornament. Her
movements and gestures were all quick and abandoned. She buzzed about
Harold like a brilliant humming-bird hovering over a tropical flower.
The tropical flower, it was perceivable, belonged to the vegetable
kingdom. It made no false effort to enter into the movement. It sat
quietly awaiting the attack, perhaps even unconscious that there
would be an attack, but dimly aware that some unnatural phenomenon
was in process of accomplishment. Quite suddenly, casting off the
semblance of the radiant bird, Zimbule became as colubrine as one of
her ex-serpents, and coiled as if to strike. Campaspe watched her,
fascinated; Bunny watched her, glowering.
* * * * *
The great night arrived. There had been more discussion about the
spectator-guests.
Ask your friends, Campaspe had suggested, mocking despair.
I have no f-f-f-friends, retorted the Duke, only people that amuse me,
and people I sleep with.
Well ... ask them.
The people that amuse me are all in the p-p-p-play.... The theatre
isn’t b-b-b-b-b-big enough to hold the others.
Still, from somewhere, he had gathered an audience, a splendid, showy
throng. Campaspe, through the folds of the curtain, watched them file
into the theatre. Some of the faces she recognized; others were unknown
to her; but the assembling of such a representative collection on a
hot night in July was a feat which she appreciated. As she looked out
over the house, a fluttering, fragrant acervation of luminous colour,
like the flower-beds at Hampton Court, she was irresistibly reminded
of an opera night at Covent Garden, and this, she recalled, had been
the Duke’s idea, to give New York an unseasonable opera. Ronald had a
faculty for arranging things, and Campaspe loved efficiency. Whatever
he put his mind to, she began to believe, happened. It was seldom
enough, however, that one could be altogether certain what he was
putting his mind to. Even now....
In the little balcony reserved for it, the orchestra was tuning
up, discordantly. Presently, the leader lifted his bâton, and the
men began to perform Bunny’s overture. It was a new kind of music,
she told herself at once, contrapuntal jazz, in which saxophones
whistled and shrieked and groaned like hysterical school-girls
telling lewd experiences, while the violins and double-basses vamped
rhythmically. Flutes cried out in the tones of insane criminals.
There was an indescribable clatter of tambourines, bones, triangles,
castanets, gongs, drums, tomtoms, cow-bells, cymbals, wood-blocks,
and rooster-crows. Listening behind the folds of the silver curtain,
Campaspe realized that at last she was hearing the music of the future.
Ornstein, Prokofieff, Schönberg would sound, in comparison, like a
minuet by Luigi Boccherini. There was a rush, a push, an extravagant
primitive quality in this music. If I listen to this music, I shall
forget my rôle, she confessed to herself, and it occurred to her to
wonder if Bunny was, after all, a genius. Anybody must be a genius who
could stir her as this music was stirring her. She was drenched, nay
submerged, in merciless floods of clang-tints: unnamable sins obsessed
her consciousness. She exerted her will, and peeping between the folds
of the curtain, gazed at the assemblage. The ladies’ faces were drawn
taut and pale; some of them were contorted by strange grimaces. Bosoms
rose and fell in a shuddering, broken rhythm. The men looked hard
and cold, like men who had just had their toes chopped off, but who
were too stoical to scream. Suddenly, with one shrill blast from the
saxophones, one crisp screech from the flutes, the band saw purple and
cavorted into obsolete keys, neglecting its duties towards the tempered
scale. Then, swiftly, with a tortured snatch of parody of I’ll build a
stairway to paradise, the overture ended. The men were now flushed and
restless, seemingly ashamed to look at their companions. The ladies, as
if to recover their poise, began to chatter affectedly. There was no
applause.
A triumph! A complete triumph! Campaspe turned to the Duke.
Rather! he admitted. And I wanted this man to arrange some of Viganò’s
p-p-p-paltry tunes. He’s better than Stravinsky!
Campaspe was reflective. He never wrote like this before. I wonder if
it is Zimbule who has inspired him?
He has seen something. It is the last wail of a d-d-discarded mule in
hell.
Zimbule, in her boy’s costume, approached.
Say, what is it?
Bunny’s overture, Campaspe muttered.
Sounded like a stale calliope at Coney. Where’s Harold?
Clear the stage, shouted Paul in his capacity as stage-manager.
They obeyed him and, as the silver folds parted, out into the void
before a yellow satin drop walked Oliver Drains in a suit of purple
tights which terminated only in a white-ruffed collar. For some time
Drains had fancied himself arrayed à la John Barrymore in The Jest.
He had seized his opportunity. The orchestra played Some sunny day.
There was a ripple of applause for the performer. Drains bowed. He
began by tossing gold balls in the air. He continued the ritual. White
mice were discovered harboured in the kinky wool of a recalcitrant
coon. Artificial mango bushes bloomed from empty jars. An otiose
table suddenly offered support to a bowl of swimming goldfish, which,
apparently, had come out of the air. The orchestra played Dear old
southland. The spectators seemed to have regained their equilibrium.
Only one woman, far in the back, gazed about furtively in an attempt
to discover if any one recalled what her condition had been but a few
brief moments earlier.
May I borrow a hat? Drains called out.
The hats were piled in the Louis XIV bedroom. One of the Duke’s
Ceylonese servants descended in search of the demanded article. There
was a flutter of fans through the heated chamber. An old gentleman
already suffered from a sad and correct drunkenness. Two young men
strolled out, feeling their hips. This recognition scene became more
general.
After Drains’s number absinthe was served in goblets.
Next came the acrobats, four brothers from the halls, professionals
in pink fleshings, with spangled ruching about their middles. The
orchestra played I’m just wild about Harry. The fans pursued their
endless game. After this turn the Ceylonese servants served arrack in
crystal bowls, and passed cigarettes with lighters on beaten copper
trays.
Now the glow in the auditorium was extinguished. The Ceylonese boys
set fire to braziers and the odour of Narcisse Noir permeated the
atmosphere. Again, the orchestra played Bunny’s music, the incidental
music he had composed for Nozière’s baroque comedy, l’Après-midi
Byzantine, music which began with a faint roll of drums, which grew
louder and louder and then died away. Now a clarinet, solo, played a
plaintive, incestuous melody in a scale much higher than that which
is usually associated with this instrument. The saxophone took up the
thread, playing a few bars, and when the saxophone had finished, the
double-bass had something indelible to say. Then, quite unreasonably,
the piano held a soliloquy. Campaspe was glad that she was not looking
at the audience. She could imagine the faces. Her hands, she felt, were
as cold as fresh spring water.
The silver curtains parted anew and the play proceeded. The first
great moment was the appearance of the Cambodian dancer, a slender,
full-bosomed bayadere, clad, like Moreau’s Salome, only in jewels.
Sparkling with light, her face as expressionless as a Noh mask, she
stood on a small round platform in a miniature circle of illumination.
Her movements were slow and insinuating; there was no abandon, no
swift grace, in this dance. But she contrived to invest her slightest
gesture with a leste significance, and when, seated, cross-legged, she
bent her long fingers back until they touched her fore-arms, her face
remaining the face of an unwrapped mummy, she suggested, irrevocably,
the expiatory pain of a supreme sin.
Zimbule, too, tossed by the intricate intrigue of the play into the
arms of one character after another, exhibited a nonchalance and rare
perversity which lifted her performance into the realm of something
rich and strange. In her scene with Harold, the scene of the charioteer
with the boy-sculptor, a scene written in a mocking, cynical spirit,
she far transcended anything, however curious, that the author had
imagined. To this episode, in which Clinias, betrayed with the mistress
of Hippolyte, attempts to conciliate the burly athlete, she gave a
touch of mystic sensuality, aided by Bunny’s music, which, in its
definite contradictions, its wholly inappropriate rightness, wailed on.
Harold, naturally, was lamentably bad. The curtain fell in silence,
but, almost immediately, there rose a great storm of applause.
It belongs to Zimbule and Bunny, said Campaspe. Let them take the
calls. Bunny, morbid with grief and chlorosis, and yet transfigured
with excitement, was discovered hovering in a corner. As the curtains
parted again, Paul pushed him on to the stage. Zimbule strolled on
unconcernedly from the other side, dragging the reluctant Harold in her
wake. Bunny groaned and buried his face in his hands. There were cries
of Bravo! and Brava!
There has never been anything like it, Ronald, Campaspe exclaimed.
I don’t feel as if I had been part of it at all. I was so occupied
looking and listening. Did I remember my lines?
You were perfect, Firebird. The Duke was distrait.
Strange. I don’t remember having spoken a single word.
* * * * *
Drains had departed. The acrobats were dressing. The actors in their
costumes mingled with the throng. Many of the guests, like sharks
after a slain leviathan, crowded into the dining-room for supper,
chaud-froid, truffle salad, spumoni.... Others lingered in the theatre.
In the garden a little group of lanky, pale youths, demi-puceaux,
congregated. The silent Ceylonese passed, expertly, up and down,
through and about, with cigarettes and trays laden with minuscule
glasses and fat bottles of Danziger Goldwasser.
Little by little, the excitement dwindled, and there were signs that
the New York season would soon come to an end. One of these was the
demeanour of the Duke who, from time to time, frankly yawned, making
no effort to conceal his dehiscent jaw. Bunny had disappeared shortly
after his tragic curtain call. Zimbule accepted her encomiums as if
she found them exceedingly tiresome. She seemed exalted, disembodied.
Campaspe, conscious of impending drama, hovered in her wake.
With a fiercer intensity Harold felt that a fatality assembled the
elements which made up his life. He had begun to think of himself as
an automaton, set up and wound to give pleasure ... to whom? Not to
himself. Not too much, apparently, to these others. Was he giving,
then, some form of pleasure to his father. Was his father taking a
perverse joy in watching him struggle in these nets of silk and gilt.
At least, and at last, he was free of Zimbule. Once the curtains had
fallen she had released his hand and left his side.
Campaspe, in her clinging blue robe, followed Zimbule down the
stairs, listening to the re-echoing Remarkable! Marvellous! Divine!
Extraordinary! Kolossal! Epatante! The crowd had seen something, heard
something, tasted something, touched something, smelled something. And
Campaspe, as always, had experienced the reflex of the crowd. That was
about all there was left, she admitted to herself, but it was wonderful
when it happened. Zimbule seemed tired and listless, petulant even. She
shook hands and received compliments languidly, without any interest,
Campaspe thought, and yet she still sensed a strange vibrancy in the
girl, a curious electrical quality, preserved for future transmission.
Where, and to whom? Campaspe looked about for Harold. He was nowhere to
be seen. The Duke, too, had disappeared, and several escaping guests
shook hands with Campaspe, mistaking her for the hostess. She asked
Zimbule if she would like to change, and the girl assented, almost
eagerly, Campaspe noted. They installed themselves in the magnificent
bathroom and Campaspe dispatched Frederika to the top floor for their
dresses. Meanwhile, she watched Zimbule, as the child quickly divested
herself of her ivory tunic and the single protective piece she wore
beneath this, and soon stood in her sandals, rose and perspiring in
her nudity, before the black mirrors. How wonderful it was that this
girl, who had never taken any care of her body, should possess such
a perfect body, perfect in its proportions, perfect in its details.
Women with beautiful bodies never suffer from modesty or a sense of
shame, Campaspe said to herself, and she remembered that some man had
told her recently that he had been married for five years but had
never seen his wife’s feet. He had been certain that her feet were ugly
or deformed or that they suffered from one of the diseases that feet
suffer from. Looking at this child, exquisite in her lack of shame, her
natural ignorance of an occasion for it, Campaspe assured herself that
the man had judged his wife justly.
You are lovely, she said.
Zimbule, already silent for some time, said nothing now, but her
face brightened with an appreciative smile, and there was something
interrogative also in her expression.
I wonder if he will think so, she breathed at last.
Frederika had returned with their white evening gowns, and she helped
them to don them. Campaspe, dressed first, directed her maid to draw on
Zimbule’s stockings and her little satin shoes.
Shall I ask you both to my house tomorrow? was her suggestion.
Zimbule threw her a swift glance of gratitude. I shan’t wait till
tomorrow, she said, the colour mounting to her cheeks. She had rubbed
off the last vestige of make-up, but she was still as rosy as a country
milk-maid.
Tomorrow, too, if you like, Campaspe encouraged.
Oh! well! We’ll be in bed, I hope.
Some one was pounding on the door.
Who’s there? Campaspe demanded.
Ronald, came the reply. They’ve all g-g-g-gone, and I want to go to
b-b-b-bed.
Campaspe opened the door.
We’re dressed, she said. Ronald, the opera was a success. New York
has had a summer season. I can pass the autumn in Sicily with perfect
safety.
Did you like it? was his indifferent query. It bored me. It was fun to
plan, but stupid to do....
Where’s Harold? Zimbule asked.
Harold? repeated the Duke, alarmed by the idea that there might be
still others who had not departed.
Mr. Prewett, he dress upstairs, volunteered one of the Ceylonese
servants.
Good God! Not gone yet, groaned the Duke.
_We’re_ going now, said Campaspe.
Good-night, Firebird, and thank you.... He kissed her.... Good-night,
little O’Grady. You shone.
Thanks. Good-night, Mr. Ronald. Zimbule could never be persuaded to
call the Duke anything else.
They went on down the stairs, Frederika following with their bags.
Can I drive you home? asked Campaspe.
No, thank you. I have a taxi waiting. I ordered it some time ago.
At the foot of the stairs an obstruction appeared: Bunny.
Zimbule was direct: I’m not going home with you, Bunny.
You can’t do that to me! His tone was appealing rather than threatening.
I’m not going home with you. Don’t make a row. It won’t do any good.
I’m roosting with Campaspe.
Oh! God! Zimbule, what have I done? What’s the matter? The boy began to
weep.
Cut that! You haven’t done anything.... I’m going home with Mrs.
Lorillard.
She was determined: this much was apparent even to a vision obscured by
tears. Bunny stepped back, splashing himself like an ugly blot against
the blue wall, and the three women made their way out.
Good-night, Campaspe, whispered Zimbule, as she kissed her friend.
Good-night.
She slipped into the waiting taxi, after a direction to the chauffeur,
uttered in too low a voice for Campaspe to catch it, and the vehicle
shot away into the black night.
* * * * *
Harold was the last to leave, for Bunny had slunk out as soon as he
caught the sound of departing wheels. Harold did not even meet the
Duke in the corridor and, as the door of his bedroom was closed, he
refrained from knocking. After hesitating a moment in the deserted
street, he decided to walk home; it was so hot and so quiet. Turning
into Fifth Avenue, brilliantly lighted in spite of the late hour, he
walked north until he touched Eighteenth Street.
Soon he was home. Ascending to his floor, he took out his key and
prepared to open the door. To his amazement, he found a key already
in the lock. Oliver? But Oliver did not stay here nights. Thieves,
assuredly, would never leave a key in the door. Still, for a second or
two he hesitated, pondering as to whether he should go back for Pedro,
the hall-boy. Then he turned the key and entered.
The apartment was perfectly dark. He pressed a button which illuminated
the living-room. Nobody there. Passing into the bedroom he pressed
another button. His eye fell first on a chair on which was heaped a
congeries of feminine apparel. Then he turned to his bed. Curled up,
quite uncovered in the heat, sound asleep, in much the same attitude
that he had seen her assume with Bunny, lay Zimbule.
Harold stared at her for a moment. Then, his heart beating violently
with rage and fear, he pressed the button extinguishing the light. He
tip-toed to the hall, pressed the other button, and passed out, closing
the door softly behind him.
As he descended in the elevator, Pedro blinked and eyed him curiously,
and as Harold rushed out the front entrance, slamming the door
violently, the boy whistled softly to himself. Then, with a smile,
Pedro lit a cigarette and, like Madama Butterfly, sat down to wait for
the dawn.
_Chapter VIII_
The next day began for Campaspe about one o’clock in the afternoon.
The sun was high and bright, but the atmosphere was refreshingly cool;
it was one of those charming days with a gentle sea breeze which
alternate with sultry, humid weather in any New York summer. Campaspe
sipped her coffee in bed, and glanced over her mail. There were letters
from her two boys who were passing the summer with their grandfather
at Southampton. These she opened first. Esmé had caught a blue-fish
and Basil wanted a cowboy’s suit with chaps, a red-flannel shirt, a
sombrero, and a lariat. Both of them desired to see their mother.
Wasn’t she coming down? She tapped an envelope against her open lips as
she thought of her sons. Campaspe loved her children, and occasionally
she had them with her. It was constitutional of her, however, to
believe that she was only doing her best for others when she entirely
pleased herself. She had decided, quite wisely, events had proved, not
to leave New York again this summer. In the fall she would see the
boys before she went to Europe and they were sent to boarding-school.
It was better so. Boys, she felt, developed more rapidly and more
individually if they did not live too much with their parents. Their
grandfather, she knew, would permit them to do anything they wanted to
do, and she was satisfied that this was the only way to bring children
up successfully. Cupid, to be sure, went down to Southampton about
twice a month. He was romantically attached to his sons and cherished
a father’s conventional ideas, but he, as much as their grandfather,
could be depended upon not to interfere with their wishes. He wanted
them to love him, and Campaspe felt certain that he would never thwart
their desires for fear of sacrificing that love. Ironically enough,
the boys loved their mother more than they did their father. This,
in a way, justified her course of action; not that Campaspe ever
sought justification for her acts, but sometimes it gave her a certain
human amount of pleasure to realize that she was right.... Later, in
boarding-school, there would be interference, of course, but that was
external interference of the kind the boys might afterwards expect in
life and consequently good for them; it had nothing to do with the
family.
The next letter she opened was from Laura, who was spending the summer
in the Berkshires. She, too, wanted Campaspe to join her. All the
world, it would seem, was calling for Campaspe, but this was invariably
true, she realized, when one was enjoying oneself. It was only when
one felt lonely and bored that nobody asked one to do anything or to
go anywhere. The thought came to Campaspe that she was seldom lonely,
seldom bored nowadays. Only in her extreme youth had she experienced
these and kindred unpleasant emotions. She had a practical nature;
she hated the ineffectual. She had conquered fear; she conquered any
feeling that annoyed or troubled her. She had mastered a formula for
handling life, made life her slave, and this formula infrequently
failed her.
After her bath, she donned a dressing-gown of pale green crêpe de
chine, purfled in silver frogs, their legs extended in queer swimming
postures, and sat down before her little writing-desk.
Dear Laura, she wrote:
You are bored in the Berkshires. I am amused in New York. Why
should I go to you. Return, rather, to me. I know, of course, you
can’t or won’t. You always consider the feelings of your children
or your husband and, as a consequence, always keep them unhappy or
uncomfortable. If you lived your own life, they would adjust their
lives to yours. I suppose, as a matter of fact, that you are living
your own life, doing what you really want to do, just as much as I
am. People who suffer usually like to suffer and talk about it. There
is Wilson Goodward, for instance, always complaining about his hard
knocks, his consistently bad luck, always insisting that nothing ever
comes out right for him. He likes to suffer and he likes to talk about
his suffering. It is his way of making himself important. He cannot
impose his personality on others in any positive way, he cannot work
his will with life, and so he employs negative tools. Naturally, I
don’t mean all this for you. What I really think about you is that you
are domestic, that you love your family, and that you adore excursions
into the country with them, but before your more sophisticated
friends, Laura, you feel ashamed of your true emotions and you believe
it is necessary to apologize for your natural feelings. In time,
probably, you will cease to do this and begin to lecture me as,
perhaps, I seem to be lecturing you now! But I am not, really. I am
merely chattering, as I would chatter if you were here. I am too happy
to give advice to any one.... I am deliriously happy!
Such a summer! Ronald is here--you know, the Duke of Middlebottom;
at least, you have heard me speak of him. He’s done such an amusing
thing: taken a town house in New York in July to transfer the London
season here. At least that’s what he says he has been doing; I think
he may have other reasons for being here. At any rate, he has carried
his masked purpose far enough to give New York a July “opera season.”
Only one night, but what an opera! It really wasn’t an opera at all,
but there was music, which Bunny wrote, thereby convincing me that
he is a genius. There was one moment when all veils were rent. You
should have seen Mrs. Pollanger! But _all_ of them sat naked,
just as they will again in hell. That was _my_ moment: I felt
that Bunny, unconsciously, had done that for me. Certainly, nobody
else appreciated it. It made no impression whatsoever on the person he
_thought_ he had done it for. She is a snake-charmer, or was for
a day or so, really the most unusual and nicest child--she is nearly
seventeen--I have ever met. She follows her instincts, actually
follows them; not the way I do, consciously and scrupulously,
after years of trying to do something else, but involuntarily,
automatically, and she has done so from birth, I should imagine....
I have had great fun teaching her how to dress, how to walk, how to
speak, not too apparently; just a hint here and a hint there, which
she accepts and takes advantage of, makes her own, so to speak,
only too greedily. She is a born duchess, _natural_ like a
duchess--never alarmed lest she be doing something that others will
consider wrong or in bad taste--and, consequently, an aristocrat,
entirely free from vulgarity. For you know it is my belief that only
those are vulgar who make pretensions to be what they are not. Perhaps
you would consider her vulgar. Some day, it is entirely possible, I
may consider her vulgar myself. I can see her in the future, driving
past me without bowing, when she reaches a social station in life
which she regards as higher than mine. At present, she is only
concerned with love, but she will doubtless go beyond that. She will
be disappointed and disillusioned by love, as all of us are some time
or other, and she will probably marry a rich man and live unhappily
ever after, because, au fond, she is an animal, and she will only be
happy so long as she lives like an animal, naturally and a little
libidinously. She is just through with Bunny, who adores her.
And that brings me to Paul, who is the only person I never really
worry about. Paul is so good and kind and amusing and helpless and
_lucky_. At present, he is being taken care of by a rich and
eccentric old gentleman, who has put his son in Paul’s charge, for
a new kind of education. Harold Prewett--that is the boy’s awful
name--is, I should imagine, undergoing a course in worldliness. His
father must believe that he is a prig. Harold is by no means a
prig. He is a boy with fine instincts, who has been compelled by
circumstances, as I see it, to lead a secluded life. Paul’s way of
living, and mine, do not suit him at all, and I think he must be very
unhappy. He is not, however, as dependent upon fate as Paul. Harold is
still young; some day he will assert himself. Indeed, even while I am
writing these words, it has occurred to me that it may be his father’s
grim intention to develop the boy’s character in this ruthless fashion
so that he will assert himself the sooner. How, where, or when, I have
no idea. But this is one of the reasons I have no wish to leave New
York. I cannot afford to miss the scène à faire.
There are, I have discovered, and I insert the discovery
parenthetically for what it may be worth, two kinds of people in this
world, those who long to be understood, and those who long to be
misunderstood. It is the irony of life that neither is gratified.
I am perfectly frank with you, dear Laura, always; there seems to
be no other reason for writing long letters. You know that I seek
my thrills in a curious, vicarious way. You know that what befalls
others is of more interest to me than what befalls myself. Indeed, you
must be aware by now that I do not care to have anything happen to me
at all. If I can prevent it, things never do happen to me, and _I
can prevent it_. I have even arranged it so that I do not suffer
physical pain when it is inconvenient for me.